


The Ten Thousandth Sister

by ShannonPhillips



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7085974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seriously, there WOULD be trans clones. There’s definitely enough variation in the process of how they’re created and raised for there to be some range of gender identity & expression. I wanted to, briefly, tell that story because it makes perfect sense and it totally explains why female stormtroopers would not be an issue. There were women serving in the clone army all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ten Thousandth Sister

There are things she knows before she knows herself.

This is true of them all. Clones grow so quickly: their ability to take in information outstrips their brains’ ability to form long-term memories. So they acquire sensory processing tools, motor skills, and low-level neural structures—such as those related to language acquisition and certain conditioned behavioral responses—before they begin to accumulate the store of experiences from which a conscious self will eventually emerge.

And because they are all so much alike, these _selves_ are rooted in difference. All these bodies with the same face, feeling the same basic needs: for food, for exercise and for rest, for companionship and for direction. Who am **I** but the one who is, in some way, different? There is no self until a point of divergence is found.

Ten thousand brothers, in her batch alone. Millions or billions more already deployed to the front lines of the war that rages throughout the far-flung stars. All alike: except that each is, in some way, different.

They have a keen eye for spotting those differences. Tiny variations—things their makers and their trainers would never notice—are obvious to the clones. They seize on such differences, tease them out, test them constantly until the boundaries of individuation are known. The teasing is sometimes friendly and sometimes harsh, but there is always an undercurrent of _recognition_ that none outside their brotherhood can provide. In a thousand small ways they are constantly saying to each other: I see you. Your face is shared, your clothes are shared, your training and housing is shared, even most of your thoughts and feelings are shared: but there is still _you_. We see you.

So, in her earliest memories, she knows. They all know. Ten thousand bodies, all alike. Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety nine of them are brothers. The ten thousandth is their sister.

Some of her batch-brothers perceive it as weakness, and target her for exclusion and bullying. Others react protectively, and would fight her battles for her—but this she cannot allow. She is a _soldier_. She is the sword and the shield of the Republic. She will never back down from a fight.

Every time they call her _Dolly_ or _Princess_ or _Rose,_ she goes in punching. Some scuffles she wins and some she loses, and in the end it’s losing that proves to her brothers what needs to be proved. That she doesn’t break and run, even when the odds are stacked against her. That she never asks for quarter. That she can take a beating and be ready to go again the next day.

Finally they stop calling her Rose and start calling her Thorn, and that’s the day when Thorn knows who she is.


End file.
